The Beater Watch: Build The Ultimate Watch Collection

The Beater Watch: Build The Ultimate Watch Collection

The shocking truth

Raging debates on watch enthusiast websites go on and on about what a person can and cannot do with their timepieces. “Can I take it golfing?” “Can I shoot a firearm?” “Can I swim with it?” The fact of the matter is you could probably do a lot of these things with most modern mechanical watches. But then the question becomes, “should you?” After all, the point of a watch collection is to have a small number of specific pieces for specific purposes. You have running shoes for running, but you wouldn’t wear them to a wedding. Similarly, your dress watch probably isn’t the best choice for the company softball game.

The traditional (i.e., mechanical) wristwatch has always had one glaring weak spot: an inability to handle physical shocks. While problems such as magnetism and water resistance were largely resolved through advances in watchcase design, there remained the Achilles heel of shock with which to contend. Mechanical watch movements are inherently fragile, made up of near microscopic components assembled to very tight tolerances. Pocketwatches had chains for a reason. A slip while winding or setting and before you know it, Mr. Butterfingers' watch is laying in pieces on the floor. Shock does violent things to a watch movement. Hands fall off, the crystal shatters, pinions sheer off, and the balance staff breaks. It is havoc on the scale of the timing belt breaking in your '02 Civic.

Because shock resistance is so important to the durability of a wristwatch, there is even an international standard that dictates the methods for testing shock resistance and the acceptable level of shock a watch should withstand. Most watch companies nowadays will claim a shock resistance of 5,000G, which sounds like a lot but really amounts to a drop from about three feet onto a wood floor. You can send your dive watch 4,000 feet underwater and it will still be ticking. But drop it on the bathroom floor in the morning and you have an expensive trip to the watchmaker ahead of you. Probably not the watch to choose when you’re building a new deck.

A new breed of watch

Mechanical watches have been through a lot over the years and proved their worth on the battlefield, underwater and in the skies. Seiko dive watches were favorites of GIs serving in Vietnam. Royal Navy divers wore Rolex Submariners while demining harbors. Lindbergh timed his fateful Atlantic flight on a Longines. But their place in harm’s way has come and gone, despite the hyperbolic marketing of luxury watch companies who like to tout the military pedigree or worthiness of their timepieces. The fact of the matter is, the most commonly seen watches on the wrists of fighting forces around the world are “CBP” — Cheap Black Plastic — digital monstrosities. Why? Because they can do a lot and take a lot of abuse. And there is no greater proving ground for a beater than the battlefield, where sand, mud, heat, cold, and knocks and shocks conspire to grind a watch into dust.

The invention of the quartz movement was the biggest game changer the watch world has ever seen and it made or broke many a watch company. The advantages of quartz watches were obvious — fewer parts, increasingly cheaper to make, lighter weight, and they were able to defy that age-old bane of wristwatches: shock. By the mid-‘70s, Japanese watch companies were cranking out inexpensive quartz watches in plastic cases by the thousands. By the 1980s, when digital sports watches came on the scene, the transformation was complete, and a new breed of watch took over. They were comfortable, multifunctional, durable, and cheap.